


Elenei's heirs

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: Good Intentions 2020 [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27234301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: Everyone knows that Shireen is an earthbender - only earthbenders can resist greyscale like that.And then, she bends fire.
Series: Good Intentions 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978876
Comments: 15
Kudos: 89
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	Elenei's heirs

When Shireen was six years old, a man tried to kill her in her bed.

Ever since the end of her uncle’s war, when it was revealed by some who had been close to him that the Prince Rhaegar had been trying to conceive the next Avatar, children of firebending Houses - children like Shireen - had been targeted by those who thought it best that there not be a next Avatar. Shireen had never been seen worthy of such consideration before, not when there were a dozen Martells and Shireen’s royal cousins and many, many other children who were not tainted by greyscale as Shireen was.

Even at just six, Shireen knew that many people assumed that the firebending had died out in her father’s line because of her. Resistance to greyscale was something enjoyed by earthbenders, after all, benders like those of Shireen’s mother’s family in the Reach, and nothing at all to do with firebending, so of course  _ she _ could not be the next Avatar. No one had given her even a moment’s notice, not until she had nearly set herself alight by accident while playing with cousin Myrcella when last she had visited court.

Father had removed them to Dragonstone immediately after that, ignoring Uncle Robert’s insistences that she would be safer at court, with his own children, and the Kingsguard to keep them safe. Father did not trust anyone at court, and he had removed them from what he called  _ that nest of vipers _ and they had sailed home to Dragonstone as soon as the tides were suitable. Ser Davos had helped with that, Shireen thought, calming the seas a little so they might reach home sooner, and she knew that Father had been grateful for it.

And then, in the middle of the night not six days after their arrival home, Shireen woke to find a man dressed all in shades of grey standing over her with a long shard of ice clutched in his hand - so she did as Father had told her, and she screamed as loudly as she knew how, swatting at him with her hands, and held him off as best she could, still bandaged because of the burns she had given herself before Father managed to control the flames in the gardens that day.

She was crying by the time Father blasted her door open - it had only been a moment, in truth, for she knew Mother and Father had moved to rooms on either side of hers, with guards and Ser Davos nearby as well - and she shrieked more in surprise than in fear when Father shot the man through the heart with a bolt of pure yellow-white lightning.

Shireen cried herself back to sleep curled up beside her father that night, but the morning after, it was all forgotten save for the beauty of the lightning he had produced from his fingertips. Lightning bending was a legacy of House Durrandon, from the storm goddess Elenei who Durran Godsgrief had taken to wife, and it was only rare now, Shireen knew, for so Maester Cressen had told her during her lessons. The Durrandon blood had been watered down twice over by Valyrian firebenders, first when Orys Baratheon wed Argella Durrandon and then, more recently, with Shireen’s own great-grandmother, who had been Princess Rhaelle before she married Shireen’s great-grandfather Lord Ormund. Maester Cressen said that many people believed that there were none of the currently living Baratheons who could bend lightning, and Shireen had not known any better until just the night before. 

It was exciting, to know Father could do something so special, especially knowing that Uncle Robert could not do it.

“Will you teach me how to bend lightning?” she asked over the morning meal, swinging her legs under her chair and not minding when Mother kept stroking her hair. She didn’t mind much, that morning, because her father was a hero and he could  _ bend lightning. _ She would later learn that he had done it before, most notably during the Greyjoy Rebellion, but for now, this was new and exciting and something she wanted to learn.

“You must master firebending first,” Father said sternly, but Shireen could see that he was pleased. “When you have done that, and can control your bending as a true master ought, we can speak again of lightning bending.”

* * *

Shiren was amazed, however, when Uncle Robert decreed that it would not be Father who trained her in firebending - despite Shireen’s wild outbursts, which Father’s well-known self-control would be ideal to train, it had been decided, without her parents’ consent, that Shireen should be sent to train under Prince Oberyn Martell of Dorne, legendary for his raw power and destructive capabilities, nominally as a peace offering between Uncle Robert and House Martell.

Mother, not knowing that Shireen might overhear by virtue of being just outside the door, was of the opinion that this was the Queen’s doing. Until Uncle Renly, no non-bender had ever held Storm’s End - always a firebender, or a lightningbender if one such existed. The succession was sometimes shifted to allow a bender to inherit lordship, and there had been more than one Lady Baratheon, for Elenei’s legacy turned out in the daughters of her line as often as the sons. Mother believed that the Queen, who had given Uncle Robert only a non-bending heir and two earthbending spares, feared that Shireen would take Storm’s End away from cousin Tommen, who in a non-bending House she would have had no means of doing out of his inheritance.

But Shireen was a firebender. The youngest of her House, the only of her generation, and the greatest threat to her cousins, if those who were inclined to keep to the old ways, where bending ability took precedence over all other things in matters of succession, sought to assert their beliefs by force.

Shireen’s lessons taught that the waterbenders in the North, such as her uncle’s great friend Lord Stark, kept more or less to the old ways. Shireen had heard it said that  _ all _ of Lord Stark’s children were waterbenders, though, as was to be expected since their lady mother, a Tully of Riverrun, was as powerful a bender as their lord father - or so Maester Cressen said, anyways.

Shireen knew her own lady mother disliked not being a bender - only one of Mother’s branch of House Florent was, though, her lord brother, and so Shireen did not think it a terrible thing, particularly. Mother being a non-bender endeared her to certain of Father’s bannermen who might otherwise have mistrusted them, inherited as they were from Prince Rhaegar, bound as they were to mistrust a lightningbender where before they had only had a firebender, and a Targaryen one at that. Maester Cressen had been quite thorough in explaining to Shireen those Houses of the Crownlands that were not wholly faithful to her lord father, as he had been thorough in explaining all things to her. Maester Cressen often told her how much of her lord father he saw in her, something that she liked to hear, despite how meanly people spoke of Father when they were at court.


End file.
